


You’re going to be the death of me

by LittleTurtle95



Series: You only live once (but do you?) [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Alternate Universe - World War I, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Little Shit, Enemies to Lovers, Everybody Lives, First Kiss, Immortality, Language Barrier, Love at First Sight, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Misunderstandings, Presumed Dead, Protective Eddie Kaspbrak, Protective Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier is Whipped, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25453615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleTurtle95/pseuds/LittleTurtle95
Summary: December 24th 1914It’s the Western Front in Central Europe, and the German and the British army meet in no man’s land to exchange gifts, sing Christmas Carols and play football, enjoying their time with the enemy if only for a day.Richard is a British soldier whose biggest regret is having enlisted in the first place. Edward is a German boy forced to join a war he had no interest in, another victim of conscription.It’s Christmas and they know they can enjoy each other’s presence without repercussions. They also know the day after they’re going to become enemies again, looking at each other from two opposite sides of the same battlefield. Every shot could be the last.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: You only live once (but do you?) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843612
Comments: 31
Kudos: 90





	You’re going to be the death of me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel of my other The Old Guard / IT crossover fic named “The Target” that takes place 106 years earlier.  
> It’s a prequel so you don’t have to read the other one first or to have already watched The Old Guard to understand this, except for maybe a few sentences in italics towards the end that are not strictly relevant to the plot so it won’t be a problem (if you did any of these two things tho you’ll understand everything). 
> 
> M rated for heavy cursing, mentioned smut (non graphic, a blink and miss) and graphic description of violence.
> 
> The dialogue in italics in Eddie’s pov is supposed to be in German, while Richie’s pov just doesn’t understand what he says.
> 
> The prompt is @reddiesupportblog’s idea so go check their Tumblr blog 🌻🌻

_**Death** , /ˈdeth/, noun:_

_> a permanent cessation of all vital functions, the loss of life;_

_> the state of being no longer alive;_

_> a cause of ruin;_

_> the passing destruction of something._

* * *

“Fucking krauts,” one of his comrades hissed, holding his side, a red stain spreading on his uniform, his just lit up cigarette abandoned on the ground. 

Richie stomped on it with his foot, a burned trench was the last thing they needed right now. Two of his teammates helped the boy dab the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. 

“It’s always the same one, that fucking sharpshooter, _fuck it hurts_ , is he even of age yet? He looks like a goddamn child. I _fucking_ hate krauts.”

 _More like I fucking hate ‘your country needs you’ bullshit,_ thought Richie instead. _I shouldn’t have come here. I’ll never enlist again… if I ever make it out of this alive, of course._

“Yeah, the asshole. Last night he got Tom on the chest, he passed away this morning. It’s always the same freak. I swear I’ll get to him one day. It’s fucking Christmas Eve mate, I don’t have the patience to deal with krauts’ bullshit today.”

Richie pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. It was Christmas Eve indeed, and he was in the goddamn Western Front, in a hole in the dirt, hundreds if not thousands of miles from his family, only dirt, and death, and blood in sight. And the krauts, of course, at the opposite side of the battlefield.

He nearly didn’t make it there because of his bad sight, but then they found out his eyes were just the perfect level of _enough_ to be sent on the battlefield anyway, just that inch above _not good enough_ that would have allowed him not to be there. He had thought it was pure _luck_ at the time. Oh, how much he’d been wrong. 

He peeked out of the trench, and locked eyes with someone on the other side of _no man’s land._

Richie saw the boy moving and immediately kneeled back down, in fear of being shot. Miraculously, no bullet followed.

“Are you _insane_ Tozier?” a voice yelled, holding his arm and pulling him down. 

“Chill out, David. I wanted to have a look at the asshole who shot George.”

“Why? Do you want a bullet in your brain?”

Richie looked at the misery surrounding him. He didn’t answer the question out loud. _Maybe_ , he thought. _Maybe I do._

The sun was setting down the horizon, long pink and orange fingers making their way in the grey sky of that December evening. As the day turned night, long shaky shadows started to cast on the dry land between the two sides. No shots could be heard anymore, not even when someone casually poked his head out for a moment.

“Do you expect a surprise attack? All of this is very unusual,” one of the other men asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“No I don’t think so. But anyhow everyone is awake, no one is sleeping and the sentinels are still on duty. I think we’ll be alright,” David answered, pensive. 

He took a mirror to spy the opposite trench without poking his head out, he still didn’t trust the enemy despite the apparent sudden silence. Richie couldn’t blame him. “They’re candles,” he whispered, his voice soft with wonder. “They’re lighting up candles. Hundreds of them.”

A few seconds later, they heard music. It didn’t sound like radio noise, it was more like

“They’re singing,” Richie said, holding his breath. “They’re singing out loud.”

The melody was the one from _Holy Night_ but he couldn’t recognise any of the words. It was the German version, he was sure of it. It didn’t took long before they started joining the enemy, singing the same song in English trying to overcome them, to sing louder. 

The opponents raised their voices as well, and they kept trying to sing louder and louder. When the song ended, it had become less like music and more like yelling. Richie heard someone laugh from the opposite trench. Everything was so weird, yet beautiful.

The night was cold, almost freezing. Sleeping in a trench underground, with no roof above his head, in central Europe, in December was hell. But he found himself suddenly feeling warm inside, he couldn’t help it. 

He poked his head out for the second time, and felt David grab his arm again and try to pull him down with them. “You’re gonna get a fucking bullet in your brain if you keep doing that.”

He brushed his hand away with a huff. “We only live once, come on. Let me have this.”

“We only die once too,” David said, under his breath, but didn’t push further.

The other trench was beautiful. Lit up candles were shining all along the opposite front, a glimmering line lighting up the night. There was the same boy from earlier, his hands on his Mauser rifle, this time making no move to use it, looking at him in curiosity, tilting his head on the side. The faint orange lights of the candles gave his features a surprising depth, he looked like a carbon sketch on paper, chiaroscuro.

The only thing Richie was able to think then was _how beautiful._

Richie smiled at him over no man’s land and lit up his cigarette, enjoying the moment of unexpected peace. A few other guys from the German side stood up joining their friend and looked back at him, and Richie felt some of his comrades standing up with him as well. He didn’t look at them, he was still looking at the boy, who now was gesturing widely and yelling something, apparently at him.

He saw some of his friends push the boy lightly and try to shush him but he was ignoring them.

“Stop! Stop! No good! No good! Stop!”

Richie frowned. Watching the two sides looking at each other without shooting was enough to be weird as it was, but this – the German soldier yelling nonsense at him – was a new level of psychedelic. Maybe he was dreaming. He rubbed his eyes, then blinked a few times. He smoked again from his cigarette, and it burned orange against the darkness of his side of the battlefield, the other one lit up by the hundreds of candles. The boy shouted again. 

Richie looked at his cigarette and then raised the hand that was holding it. “This thing?” he asked, but he doubted the boy could hear him. It didn’t matter. The action spoke louder than the words.

The boy nodded. “Yeah! Stop! No good!”

“What the fuck is the kraut trying to tell you?” David asked, beside him.

“I think he doesn’t like that I’m smoking,” Richie said smiling, he didn’t know why but the situation was starting to amuse him.

“Good. Smoke another one then,” David said.

“Nah,” Richie shrugged, “I wasn’t enjoying it anyway,” he said, and it was a lie, but no one had to know that.

He dropped it and the boy calmed down, Richie’s smile grew wider. 

“No more,” the boy mouthed, his face as clear and bright as the moon in the sky.

One of the boy’s comrades jumped off their trench and got closer. David’s hands immediately went to his rifle, holding him at gunpoint. The German soldier stopped in no man’s land, between the two trenches, his hands up. The boy on the other side was having his back with his weapon. The air suddenly was tense.

The man walked slowly towards them, his hands always in sight. Once he got close enough to talk to them without screaming, he stopped. 

Richie looked at him, then at the boy still in the trench, pointing at them with his Mauer, biting his lower lip in concentration, then at the man in front of them again.

“We no shoot tomorrow. You no shoot tomorrow,” he said, with a strong german accent. “Christmas.” 

David looked at Richie, then at George, still holding the wound tight, less pale than before. He nodded. 

“Okay,” he said. “Nobody shoots tomorrow. We celebrate”

The soldier nodded, then went back to his trench. David lowered his weapon, and so did the boy on the German side. David turned back to face the others and declared “Truce tomorrow.”

Nobody dared to complain, nobody _wanted_ to complain. 

They started to go back down to sleep one after the other, and after a while Richie was the last one standing. There was a sort of thrill, standing tall facing the opponents like this, open and vulnerable, his weapon long forgotten on the ground, a few enemies looking at him all armed, even if their rifles weren’t pointing at him anymore. 

_Nobody shoots tomorrow._

“Merry Christmas,” he mouthed towards the other side of the battlefield, but he knew his opponents couldn’t see that. His trench was the one engulfed in darkness, and he supposed they could only see his shape, if they could see him at all. It looked like they did, the boy’s gaze hadn’t left him once. “Good night,” he mouthed again, to the empty darkness between them.

That night, all his dreams were haunted by that deep piercing stare, looking straight through him like nothing before.

When Eddie blinked his eyes open, the sun had already rose. His comrades had just started waking up as well, the sentinels going to sleep for a much needed rest. He ate some dry biscuits from the breakfast supplies, sorrow almost overwhelming him.

It was Christmas Day, and he wasn’t at home. He was the farthest from home he had ever been. He was sleeping in the dirt – oh, how much he despised the dirt, so unhygienic – it was cold, so cold, and he couldn’t even stand right because he risked to get shot. That, and the fact he actually had to shoot people himself, as well. 

_Fucking mandatory conscription,_ he thought. 

He was useless on the battlefield, he knew it, he really wasn’t much of a fighter, but he was patient, and trained, and he had good eyes. He was their best sharpshooter. What he did was to kneel down in the trench, his scooped rifle pointed firmly forward, and whenever one of the Brits had the horrible idea to poke his head out he never missed a shot. Especially at night, especially when they smoked their awful cigarettes, switching on a giant neon red target on top of their heads. Eddie really couldn’t understand how they could keep doing that when it was so blatantly dangerous. 

When they did it in their trenches, they risked dropping them on gunpowder and blowing everything up. When they did it outside, it was the perfect shot for the enemy, a tiny but unmistakable light that served as the perfect target for him and people like him. 

Just like the boy from yesterday. 

_How stupid, stupid, stupid. And I’m more stupid than him giving him advices when he’s the enemy. I should have encouraged him to keep smoking, one less Brit I’ll have to care about in a few days, as soon as I can get to him_.

But the thought someone could shoot the boy while he was smoking, or worse, that Eddie could find himself in the position to murder him – because that was it, war was nothing but mass murder, good intention and protecting the homeland be damned – on the spot with a cigarette in his mound unsettled him, even more than the normal amount of sorrow that followed every time he killed someone on duty.

As soon as he was finished with his biscuits, he heard the distant sound of something bouncing. Erik, one of his comrades, looked at him with his brows raised, then he carefully raised his head to look at what happened. 

Eddie held his breath. He had heard about this _no kill_ rule for Christmas day, but he couldn’t trust the Brits following it. 

Erik came back down, unharmed.

“ _It’s a ball,_ ” he said. “ _There’s a few of them playing on no man’s land._ ”

“ _What_? _Really?_ ” Eddie jolted up to watch what was going on, lifting himself up on his elbows to get a good look. 

It was true. The Brits were playing football between the trenches, yelling occasional insults at each other, no one had a weapon in sight. There was the boy from the previous night too, the idiot smoker. Eddie looked in interest as the boy tried to catch the ball with his foot and missed it badly, falling with his ass on the ground. Eddie tried to hide a smile but failed. 

“ _I’ll go join them_ ,” Erik whispered, jumping off the trench, looking wearily around. 

A few others of his comrades followed him, and Eddie decided to go as well, looking from distance as they played. The boy fell again, but it didn’t look like he minded, he was laughing at his own awkwardness, and Eddie couldn’t help but smile again. One of his teammates said something to him and he turned towards him. Eddie tensed, knowing he just got caught staring. The boy looked at him for a moment in surprise and grinned, then he _winked._

Eddie’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat as he turned to look at something, anything else. 

_Fuck._

He saw Elias sitting on the ground in plain sight shaving one of his comrades, Eddie knew he used to be a barber before the war, he had quite the queue waiting for his services at the moment. One of the Brits with a growing beard approached them shyly, and Eddie focused on him. 

“May I…” he said, gesturing vaguely at his face. 

Elias left his work on his friend’s face half done, but no one, not even him, complained. They were all looking at the Brit sitting down, at Elias using his barber blade on his exposed throat, as the Brit stayed still in a show of trust Eddie had never seen before. There was no reason why this man should have trusted one of his opponents with a blade brushing his neck, there was no reason for Elias not to cut his throat open and kill him once and for all.

And yet, there they were. There was no hesitancy in Elias’ skilled hands as he worked, not lingering on the Brit’s skin even once, the thought of ending is life even if he could not even crossing his mind. Eddie knew that the following day one of them could try, maybe successfully, to kill the other. That was what they did. They were soldiers, after all. But not today. 

He felt a hand grabbing his shoulder and jumped. When he turned, ready to face the danger, he was met by a weak smile and a pair of thick glasses.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Eddie said, his mind a thunder of feelings, flashing from curiosity, to hesitancy, to a deep instinctual fear of the enemy.

“Merry Christmas,” the boy said, handing something to him. 

Eddie frowned in confusion but accepted the gift nonetheless, and when their fingers brushed he let the touch linger for a moment. 

He looked at what he had in his hands and examined it carefully. It was a bronze coin, a coin Eddie had never seen before. On one side there was the head of a man, with _GEORGIUS V REX_ carved all around it. On the other side, a woman with a spear and a shield with the British flag on it. _ONE PENNY._

He put it in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said, smiling back at him. That was one of the two or three small English sentences he knew.

“You’re welcome. Thanks for not killing me yesterday.”

Eddie understood enough words out of it to get the general meaning of the sentence. “ _I don’t ever want to kill you,_ ” he answered, without missing a beat.

The boy furrowed his brows in confusion, blinking slowly. That made Eddie’s insides churn but he chose to ignore it. 

“English please. I don’t understand.”

“I don’t no English,” Eddie replied apologetically. He didn’t even know if what he just said made any sense.

“That’s not true. You’re really good at it. I understand everything you say.”

Eddie bit his lips and looked at him. He had come to him, he had given him a Christmas gift, while Eddie had been completely unprepared. That couldn’t do it. He looked at him with attentive eyes, looking for inspiration. The boy seemed to tense under his stare. When Eddie noticed his plain belt buckle he decided what he was going to do.

“ _Wait_ , _stay here,_ ” he said suddenly, then he shook his head. “Wait,” he repeated in English.

The boy nodded. Eddie ran back to his trench, looking for his spare uniforms. When he found what he was looking for, he took one of the supplied knives and cut it off. He ran back to him, a sense of relief washing over him when he saw he was still there. 

“ _For you_ ,” he said, hoping the message was clear. 

“Me? For Christmas?” he asked, his surprised smile growing even wider. Eddie nodded.

The boy looked at the belt buckle with the German eagle on it, and Eddie gestured towards the one he was wearing, showing him what it was. 

“Thank you,” he said, touched, and he immediately got rid of his to change it with the new one. 

Eddie wasn’t really sure it was a sensible choice. He was pretty confident that if he dared to show up with any part of a Brit uniform on him he was going to be put on sentinel duty every night for a week, and that was being optimistic. The boy didn’t seem to care.

“I’m Richard. You can call me Richie,” he said, once he had finished replacing the belt. 

“ _Edward_ ” said Eddie.

“Edward! Nice.”

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “No Edward. _Edward,_ ” he repeated, stressing the _dv_ sound.

“Edward?”

“No,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “Eddie, okay?”

“Eds,” Richie said, smirking.

“No, no Eds. Eddie.” 

“I like Eds more,” Richie declared. 

“ _I really don’t care about what you like, that’s not my name!”_ Eddie huffed in frustration. 

Richie shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, mate, sorry,” then he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it up.

Eddie frowned. “Stop. No good.”

Richie raised one of his brows, giving him an unimpressed look. “Really? Again?”

“Stop. No good,” Eddie repeated, stubbornly.

“Why so?” he asked, his cigarette still in his mouth.

“ _Because it’ll get you killed! It’s dangerous! If you keep smoking, especially at night, you’ll make the perfect target for us! You’ll get shot from one of us. Maybe I will have to do it myself! You can’t just stand up out of the trench lit up like a fucking Christmas tree and expect not to get killed. Are you insane or just genuinely dense?_ ”

Richie was looking at him half confused half something else Eddie couldn’t quite place. He knew he had lost his temper, he had even started gesturing at some point, he knew he probably looked like an absolute fool. 

“I didn’t understand a word of what you said,” Richie whispered, softly, like he was telling him a secret. 

“Stop. No good,” Eddie pushed, because it was the only way he could try to express in English at least a shade of what he wanted to convey.

“God, you’re stubborn,” Richie said, but he didn’t sound annoyed. 

“Stubborn?” Eddie asked, scrunching his nose. He didn’t know the word. 

Richie smiled at him in a way he hadn’t smiled before. He felt a weight in Richie’s eyes as he was looking at him. “Oh Eds,” he said, “you’re going to be the death of me.”

“No Eds. Eddie,” he corrected, and Richie tilted his head back and laughed loud, like a bark. 

“See? Stubborn.”

The day after, Richie woke up with the sound of his teammates chatting. It wasn’t Christmas anymore, the Truce was officially over, everyone was back at work. He brushed his new buckbelt with his fingertips, thinking about the day before. He sighed, looking for his breakfast ration.

“What’s up?” he asked, blinking away his sleepiness. 

“We’re going for a surprise attack this morning. They won’t expect it, not after what happened yesterday,” David explained.

“A _surprise attack_? As a proper attack? To… kill them?” 

David shrugged. “Of course. What else could I mean? Do you want us to shoot them some confetti and pour champagne all over their heads for fun?” 

“We… played with them yesterday! Artie you… they shaved you! You can’t be serious!” 

“This is war, Richie,” Arthur said, too calm for Richie’s liking. “We can’t just end it all and go home because they shaved me. What did you expect?”

Richie stayed silent. He didn’t know what he was expecting, honestly. But he knew what he _wasn’t_ expecting: to murder them in their sleep in the morning as a _surprise._

“If we don’t do that now we’ll come to it anyway, eventually,” David tried to explain. “We’ll keep shooting every time someone pokes out like the last few days until one side will have to do this kind of shit to break the deadlock. We better do it ourselves before they think of it. It’s not like they will stop trying to get us anyway.”

“I don’t like it.”

“This is a fucking war Tozier,” another of his comrades said, “nobody likes it.”

The fight was a mess. It always was. It all started with a grenade thrown in their trench by David, that resulted with them all jumping out of it on plain sight, all falling under the shots of their snipers. After that first carnage, Richie saw his comrades getting out too, ready to take the opposite trench to claim it. He followed them without hesitation, not because he wanted to but because he knew hesitation meant death during a fight. 

He saw Arthur fall next to him, screaming in pain. They jumped in the opposite trench, stepping on the ones that were still hiding down. Richie heard a shot and David yelped, hit on his leg. He followed the direction of the shot with his eyes and finally saw Eddie.

He was holding him at gunpoint, staring back at him with wide eyes. 

For one moment, Richie had the deep certainty that he was going to kill him. Eddie looked like he was sure he was about to kill him, too. Once that thought clearly flashed before his eyes he looked down at his hands in horror and lowered the weapon, sparing his life.

Richie froze. Everything else stopped existing. 

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, and suddenly the base of his neck splashed red and he collapsed on the ground, the shot wound on his throat bleeding profusely, soaking his uniform. His glassy eyes, now unfocused, couldn’t see anything anymore. He was _dead_. 

It was like a switch had just shut his brain off. 

Richie’s ears started ringing. He turned to face the one of his teammates that had fired the shot and tried to look at him, but couldn’t focus. The boy was just a foggy shape in front of him.

“What is it, Tozier?”

“No,” Richie said, in a whisper. “ _No_.”

“Fuck,” his teammate said, Richie had no idea who it was, nor he cared. 

“No,” he said again. He couldn’t think at anything else.

 _No. No. No, no,_ _no_.

“Someone bring him away!” the boy yelled, to anyone of them was listening. 

They weren’t new to panic attacks, it wasn’t rare for one of them sometimes to see one thing that brought him over the edge and made him stop functioning during a fight. The others usually tried to bring them back to safety like they did with the wounded, but they often ended up dead.

A bullet passed between them, nearly hitting the boy’s arm. Richie didn’t notice.

“Fuck,” he said, gently slapping him. Everything around them was screams and dust. “Come back Tozier, come on!” 

He looked at Eddie’s corpse on the ground again, the bright red stain of blood that from his throat flowed all the way down to his stomach, soaking the upper part of his uniform. A few feet again he recognised the barber from the day before, the hole of a bullet between his eyes. He blinked and turned to face his comrade again, who was desperately trying to pull him down. 

“No.”

Someone screamed. He felt a blooming excruciating pain in his head for a millisecond, then everything went black. 

_A village on fire. A boy and a kid in the woods. The kid was laying down on the ground. The boy was sobbing, his head on the kids’ chest. A river. Water everywhere. He couldn’t breath. The face of girl. The face of an old woman. Kids playing in the background. French flags everywhere. Bayonets. A sudden pain in his stomach. Screams in a language he didn’t understand. A war. Uniforms he didn’t recognise. A strange American flag. The ocean. He was underwater. A kid. He was drowning, drowning, drowning._

He woke up gasping for air. The first thing Richie noticed was that it was night. The first thing he _saw_ was the person hovering over him, someone with a different uniform. He jolted up and stumbled back, trying to put as much space between them as possible. 

“What the fuck?” he yelped, blinking, trying to understand where he was. “ _What the fuck_?”

A voice told him one word he didn’t understand and Richie saw the shape in front of him handing him something. He accepted it hesitantly and as soon as he touched it he immediately knew what it was. 

“Oh, thank God,” he said, putting his glasses back on. 

When he finally recognised the boy in front of him, he flinched in surprise. “Eds!”

“Eddie,” the boy corrected.

His uniform was still drenched in blood, but the stain that had been bright red now had turned dark. They were the only two standing, surrounded by corpses. 

“What happened?” Richie asked, his breath starting to fasten. 

_He was dead. I saw him die. His uniform, there’s too much blood. He was dead. Dead. I saw it with my eyes. He got killed._

“Calm,” Eddie said, in his strong accent.

“No, not _calm_ ,” Richie said, raising is voice. “Not _calm_ at all! You were dead, I saw you… oh my God. Where are the others?”

Eddie pointed to the side. Richie pushed his glasses up his nose and squeezed his eyes. There was another trench, it looked like half a mile away. Apparently they had claimed that territory, making the enemy retreat even if only a bit, digging another trench further east. _Good._

“What happened?” he asked again. He couldn’t understand how Eddie could be so apparently unfazed by everything that was happening.

Eddie touched him gently on his forehead, and Richie flinched. His fingers brushed his head, then he showed them to him. His fingertips were red.

“Blood? On my forehead? I… I’ve been shot, right? They shot me right in the head. Fuck. How am I alive?”

Eddie didn’t answer. He took a knife from his uniform and Richie stepped back. Eddie sighed. “Calm,” he said again.

He showed him the palm of his own hand. When Richie understood what he was going to do he tried to stop him, but it was too late. Eddie had cut a long line from side to side on his palm, it looked deep and it immediately started to bleed.

“Stop!” Richie said, slapping his other hand. The knife fell on the ground. “You’re hurting yourself!”

“See!” Eddie said, ignoring him. He showed him his palm and Richie froze. Eddie’s skin was slowly healing, closing the cut itself, neat and clean. After a few seconds, his palm looked perfectly untouched. 

“Holy fuck,” Richie cursed. 

Eddie then tilted his head on the side, exposing his throat. The blood was still there, staining his skin, but he didn’t look hurt anymore. The ugly hole at the base of his neck was gone, like it never existed in the first place. 

“See, Richie. See.”

Richie’s fingertips brushed his throat, and Eddie shivered under his touch, the sudden intimate gesture leaving him breathless. Richie’s fingers went up along the line of his neck and ended on Eddie’s jaw. His skin was smooth and warm. Neither of them spoke. 

Eddie covered Richie’s hand in his, holding it firmly in place on his jawline.

“You,” Eddie said. “You like me.”

“Yes,” Richie let out, without thinking. “I like you. Yes, yes, yes.”

Eddie tried to bite back a smile and looked away. “No, I…” he muttered something that sounded like a curse word. He left his hand, leaving it cold and empty. “Hand,” he demanded.

“You need my hand?”

“Hand.” 

Richie reluctantly left his face and offered him his hand. He saw him get the knife closer and yelled, “hey, wait!” but again it was too late. 

“Ouch,” he whined, looking at his bleeding palm. After a few moments, his hand healed completely like Eddie’s a few minutes earlier. “ _Fuck!_ ” 

“You like me,” Eddie repeated, matter of factly.

“Oh, that’s what you meant then. I’m like you. We’re both… like this.”

“Yeah. You like me. This thing. You and me.”

 _Well, that’s embarrassing,_ Richie thought. 

“Yeah, I’m just like you, got it,” Richie muttered, with the faint hope Eddie hadn’t got the previous misunderstanding. “But how? Why?”

Eddie shrugged. “Not know.”

“ _Not know_ , well, great. Just great. And what do we do now?” he asked, huffing in frustration. Everybody thought they were dead. They were the last standing on an empty battlefield, with corpse as the only company. They didn’t understand each other. They could not get hurt or die, apparently.

“Not know,” Eddie said again. 

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What do we do now? What do we do? Fuck.”

 _And he had to be the cutest one in the goddamn army,_ Richie thought, cursing his bad luck.

“I like you,” Eddie said then, looking at him with an amused smirk.

Richie groaned. “Yeah, yeah, I got it. We can both heal. We’re similar. Don’t say it like that, it means something else,” he said sharply.

“No!” Eddie said, raising his voice. He was starting to get annoyed for the constant misunderstandings. Richie could relate. 

He started talking in German really fast, making wide gestures with a frown, his tone clearly pissed off.

“I don’t get it, I…” Richie said, once he was finished. “I don’t understand you. I’m sorry.”

“I like you!” he said again, stressing the words. 

“I know, you already told me. You shouldn’t say it like that, I told you, it means something else.”

Eddie covered his face with his hands, whining in frustration, then he dropped them and looked at him with such rage and determination that Richie feared once again that he was going to kill him. Well, if something _could_ actually kill him now, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

Before Richie could step back again Eddie grabbed his uniform and pulled him close, kissing him on the lips, his mouth closed. It lasted only a moment, just as demonstration, then he pushed him away, not even giving him enough time to react. 

“I like you.”

Richie looked at him in shock for a few moments. His heart was beating so fast he could almost hear it. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

“I don’t think I understand what you meant. Could you explain me again?” he asked, his voice low. 

Eddie’s lips curved in a mischievous smile. Richie knew in that moment there was no coming back from this. Immortality or not, he really got it bad. Real bad. He was completely smitten already. 

Eddie stepped forward and cupped his cheek gently. “I like you,” he whispered, their lips only a breath away.

This time it was Richie who closed the space between them. There was a soft press of lips, then he grabbed Eddie’s hips and pulled him closer, using his little surprised gasp to let his tongue slip in, exploring his mouth. He felt Eddie lean on him, melting in his arms, and every fiber of his being went on fire.

His mind went completely blank if not for him: the feeling of Eddie’s hands clinging to him, of their bodies pressed like they were meant to be, lips on lips, breaths melting together in what quickly turned in a filthy kiss. 

Their bodies soon were pressed even closer, desperately looking for friction, demanding sounds from Eddie’s mouth that Richie gladly swallowed, and when Eddie grabbed his hair and pulled, the final jolt of electricity passed through him and he had to pull away because he was this close to shove him in one of the abandoned trenches and have him there, and that would have been rather squallid, not to mention definitely disrespectful. 

When they parted Richie was out of breath, and noticed Eddie was too. 

“So, you like me, huh?” he asked, taking a step back because he already felt the urge to jump on him again, bloody uniform and all that be damned. “ _Like me_ like me.”

Eddie shrugged, an half smile on his face. 

“And what if I like you too?”

Eddie shrugged again. 

“What do we do now? We can’t go back. We’re… I don’t want to shoot at you even if I can’t hurt you. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

He was lost. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t know if this insanity was a permanent thing or something that was going to end soon. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to go. The only thing he knew was that he wasn’t alone in this.

“Not know,” Eddie said, and Richie thought that was it, his classic reply, then he added the first real sentence since they met. “But whatever we do, we do it together. Okay?”

He looked hesitant, almost scared, like he was afraid Richie was going to turn his back to him and go his own way. _As if._

“Oh Eds,”

“No Eds! Eddie!”

“You _really_ are gonna be the death of me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the real occurrence of what is called “1914 Christmas Truce”, when in some areas during WWI, men from both sides ventured into no man's land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs, and to occasionally play football with one another. However, this is NOT in any way referred to any specific event that happened in real life during the Truce and it does not claim to be historical truth.
> 
> If I knew I needed only to watch The Old Guard to unlock my Reddie writers’ block I would have done it sooner.  
> What do you think? Kudos and comments always appreciated!


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